


paradise lost in your eyes (i know you better than anyone)

by stardustgirl



Series: the dead go on before us [4]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: (or in prison), Adult Ezra Bridger, Adult Tristan Wren, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Boys Kissing, Codependency, Dark Ezra Bridger, Developing Relationship, Everyone is Dead, Ezra Bridger Gets a Hug, Ezra Bridger Has PTSD, Ezra Bridger Needs a Hug, Falling In Love, Feelstember, Feelstember 2020, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Inquisitor Ezra Bridger, Just a general warning Ezra is a hot mess in this fic, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mentioned Sabine Wren, Pining, Purple Prose, Self-Hatred, The Empire Wins (Star Wars), Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Relationships, Vignettes, ezra is just. not in the headspace for a relationship rn At All.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: Navigating relationships is hard.(Prompt fill for “Steps” for Feelstember.)
Relationships: Ezra Bridger/Tristan Wren
Series: the dead go on before us [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882459
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: Feelstember 2020





	paradise lost in your eyes (i know you better than anyone)

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Dissociation, Codependency, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Torture, Referenced Character Death, Victim Self-blaming

**i.**

This thing between them isn’t easy to admit. Twelve isn’t sure if he’ll _ever_ admit it, in all honesty. He’s still too afraid of hurting him, of hurting him the way Seven claimed was love, though not in so many words. He’s so _terrified_ of loving him that that kiss as they leave the ocean world nearly makes him crumble apart into shards too small and too jagged for either of them to pick up off the ground and piece back together.

Twelve is eternally glad that Tristan hasn’t brought up what he did—nearly did—when he was drunk that night. He still wants to kiss Tristan—more than kiss, if he’s honest with himself—but he can’t help the feeling that he’s on the edge of something terrible with every step he takes.

He knows that he’s lucky, to be with— _to be_ traveling _with—_ such a kind, understanding person as Tristan. Someone who doesn’t rush him— _if he doesn’t want you, then of_ course _he won’t rush you!—_ to make up his mind about what this _thing_ between them is called. He knows that he’s lucky, to be able to cry in the ‘fresher for hours without Tristan telling him to just suck it up because Kanan’s been dead for two whole years now and this isn’t any way to remember him by. He knows that he’s lucky, to be so fragmented— _rather than dead—_ his mind so ruined by everything the Empire’s done that he can hardly look at himself in the mirror without wishing he was blind.

He knows that he’s lucky, and he never takes that for granted. Never again.

* * *

**ii.**

Tristan’s thoughts are easy to read, now that they’re talking to each other. It’s as simple as grabbing flimsi pamphlets in the wind, of grasping and holding tight to fleeting thoughts that ebb and flow with the tides of his mind. Twelve has to struggle, actually, to _not_ read his thoughts all the time. It’s odd, this reversed shielding of sorts, but it’s just another strange part of the odd dance they’re performing every day now. He only wishes he knew the steps to it.

* * *

**iii.**

Tristan wants to find Sabine. That’s what they’re working towards, Twelve thinks, or at least he’s pretty _sure_ that’s what they’re working towards. He wants to find her, he does, he wants to get her out of whatever hole the Empire’s thrown her in, but he’s terrified of this, too.

He’s terrified she’ll see him and see the sham that her brother has somehow managed to believe in, that she’ll see that Twelve isn’t Ezra and that Ezra died alongside Kanan in that cell, that she’ll see all of the scars from the past two years and know just how _weak_ he was to have let Seven get behind his guard after she had broken— _after you_ let her—in. So he takes two steps forward, tells Tristan he loves him even though he only halfway knows how to love anymore, even though he’s taking one step back because even though he _wants_ to do anything to earn that smile back, he’s too selfish to do so, because in the early hours he’ll alter their course and add another jump to a meaningless planet so they run out of fuel and need to stop—to hesitate—to pause—

Twelve’s always shown half of the Dark Side, even when he was Ezra and Kanan was alive and everything was _good_ and _right_ and full of _hope_ and the Inquisitors were just a singular Pau’an in black armor with glinting fangs rather than the ranks of black-clad soldiers Twelve knows all too well.

* * *

**iv.**

Tristan murmurs soft words and laughs in between breaths as he tells Twelve over and over and over just how much he’s worth— _false. you are an Inquisitor. you are a failure.—_ and just how much he loves him— _not true. only snakes can love snakes and Tristan is neither yet you are both.—_ as they journey aimlessly amidst the darkened tapestry of the starred quilt cradling them in starshine-encrusted hands, and Twelve thinks of the crates he’d play in as a child and pull Mom’s quilt down over to provide a backdrop to his adventures in the living room starship. He finds himself oddly grateful his folks are dead, now.

That way, they can’t see the monster he’s become.

* * *

**v.**

Tristan asks him, late one night-cycle on their stolen ship with its stolen moments, if it’s okay to kiss him.

Twelve says yes.

As Sabine’s brother kisses him, faint stubble prickling against his skin, he wonders what her opinion of this would be. Would she kill him slowly for daring to love someone so much _purer_ than him, or would she have mercy— _mercy is knives and pain and fire burning in your bones as you’re pressed up against the wall with nails like daggers digging into you—_ and get it over with quickly?

Somehow, he manages to push thoughts of his own demise away, and kisses Tristan back.

* * *

**vi.**

Tristan begins to initiate it more often, begins to ask him more and more as the days go by if he’s okay with kissing, with hugging, with any form of being except existing alone in the shell he’s spent the last two years forming to shield himself.

Twelve decides breaking it down might be okay, and he says yes.

He doesn’t realize how starved he is for the contact until Tristan has him breathless against a wall, pulling back to tell him just how much he loves him and how he loves it when his eyes go blue like that— _she said that that was one of the things she missed most about him fighting back—_ before Twelve asks in a crackle of a whisper if they can just keep going without the need for words and doesn’t admit how solitude feels when you’re orbiting around another person with careful steps, almost as if to a long-forgotten waltz.

Tristan agrees, a flicker of something in his eyes that disappears almost immediately, and Twelve loses himself in the kiss again.

Finding himself is always harder when he’s the one who tried to get lost in the first place, and he’s okay with that.

* * *

**vii.**

Twelve stops lengthening their course at some point, stops delaying the inevitable. Tristan remarks that they’re making good time, and Twelve suppresses the breathless laugh.

He finds that the more he lets himself go, lets himself fall into the pool of apathy that emerges from the depths of his soul whenever Tristan looks at him like _that_ or brushes past him like _that_ or holds him like _that,_ the less often he has to resurface from said pool, and the less often he has to find himself again and look into his memories again. It’s easier to forget, he thinks, when there’s someone else occupying your subconsciousness.

He’s okay with someone else doing the thinking for him, if it makes all of the remembering go away.

* * *

**viii.**

Tristan asks him, as they lay on the roof of the ship while planetside one night, what Sabine was like while they traveled together.

Twelve tells him.

He doesn’t tell him of her righteous _fury_ when Kanan was captured the first time, of her _ferocity_ when Hera was on the edge of death and life, of her _fear_ when they had first met Seven and the Fifth Brother had dragged her in in cuffs. He _does_ tell him of her art, of her colors, of her wit. He tells Tristan what he thinks he wants to hear.

Tristan is quiet, and then replies, tells him thanks both with words and with a gentle kiss that helps Twelve forget everything just a little bit more.

He has nightmares that night, but he wakes before he can scream, and finds Tristan’s cabin with bleary eyes and a softly worded request. Tristan acquiesces.

* * *

**ix.**

Their first lead on Sabine is a bust. Twelve is secretly grateful, even as he knows how selfish that thought is. He washes it away with remembering on _purpose,_ on digging into the hardly scabbed over wounds Seven left and reminding himself just what it is about him that is so _wrong_ that it must be corrected. He reminds himself by not letting himself forget as Tristan holds him that night, watching the stars go by at lightspeed, telling him how everything will be okay once they find Sabine. The whole time, Twelve tells himself that this is his penance, this is what happens if he lets himself think things are okay, this is how the world works and oh _Force_ yes Tristan is _so much_ kinder than he deserves but he’ll fall back into the way things _should_ be the minute Tristan realizes just who—just _what—_ he’s wasting his time on.

Twelve is a failure, a disappointment, something broken down and built up again only to be a monster. He belongs with monsters like him, not with whatever form of light lives within Tristan’s soul.

Twelve tells none of this to Tristan, only allows himself to feel guilty as he takes advantage of the kindness granted to him and allows the soft understanding to continue. He tries his best to return it, tries to keep the longing and hunger out of his kisses and his touches, tries not to let the darkness within him bleed over and spill out to poison the light.

Seven was right about him. He is only useful as a tool. He should leave the loving to those who are good at it.

* * *

**x.**

Twelve has another nightmare, his first since moving back in with Tristan. He wakes with names spilling off of his tongue, screams lodged in the back of his throat as his eyes widen to take in the darkened room around them, and then there is a hand.

It finds his, just as soft words find his ear and whisper that he is not alone, that he doesn’t have to be hurt every time he allows himself to _feel._ The words are Tristan’s, accompanied by a hand rubbing careful, feather-light circles on his back, and Twelve—and _Ezra—_ curls into his chest and just _breathes._

This is a dance he knows the steps to, he thinks.


End file.
